![]() According to John Fairchild, publisher of Women’s Wear Daily, the term was solidified in his magazine in the early 1960s (long before Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway hit), and regularly used in the social pages of WWD alongside images of upper class women. Increasing wealth and culture in the city created the phenomenon of the ‘ladies who lunch’. More recently, in the twentieth-century the notion of a socialite has become intrinsically linked with New York’s high society. Additionally socialising was often necessary to their livelihood and the maintenance of their cultural footing. The term ‘socialite’ is a mainstay in popular culture and has its roots in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, when it referred to a woman – either a wife or mistress of nobility – who in their ceremonial title, was required to spend much of their time socialising. Susan Gutfreund, Casey Ribicoff, and Jerry Zipkin leave Le Cirque, photographed by Marina Garnier. ![]() CZ Guest talking with Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, the former Duchess of Marlborough. With this in mind, it’s interesting to note the shift in perception that the term ‘socialite’ has undergone since its historical origins and its later heyday in the social circles of New York’s upper class with the ‘ladies who lunch’. Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Tara Reid, Blake Lively and Kim Kardashian, among many other women, are just some of the wayward celebrities that nowadays are deemed as ‘socialites’, suggesting that, despite the attention they receive as objects of public fascination, their activities lack substance and are therefore trivial and excessive. ![]() Touted by gossip magazines and tabloids like The Daily Mail, Hello and Who, the term is rarely used with flattering connotations. A QUICK GOOGLE SEARCH on ‘socialite’ will inevitably come up with any number of recognisable faces from twenty-first century celebrity culture. ![]()
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